


bones in my closet (can't keep me from you)

by extasiswings



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Alternative Universe - FBI, Angst, Behavioral Analysis Unit (Criminal Minds), Canon-Typical Backgrounds, Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Getting Together, M/M, POV Alternating, Trauma Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28701633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: Not even a year after Maddie Buckley returns to the BAU, Special Agent Eddie Diaz is taken by a serial killer intent on burying his victims alive.  Evan Buckley is the best analyst the FBI has seen in years, even if he does have a tendency to play fast and loose with procedure.  But when Eddie disappears, it's a race against the clock to save him.  And for the first time, Buck worries that all the skill in the world might not be enough...[Criminal Minds/BAU-verse]
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Adriana Diaz, Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley, Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Maddie Buckley/Howie "Chimney" Han, past-Evan "Buck" Buckley/Abby Clark
Comments: 82
Kudos: 231





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thisissirius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisissirius/gifts).



> Because thisissirius said "jlh was in criminal minds though so where’s my profiler maddie who falls in love with profiler chim, works with her hotshot younger brother who’s an ace with statistics, and his ridiculous work husband, eddie" and I am way too easy to enable, have a BAU/FBI AU that has been living rent free in my mind for the last two days. I don't have an update schedule, but I will say that I have been...inspired.

“Go for Buck.”

“I was going to ask how things are going, but I guess that answers that. I know it’s bad when you don’t even try to flirt with me,” Eddie says on the other end of the line. 

Buck’s lips quirk up despite himself as he rubs a hand over his face. 

“Sorry, Agent Sexy, I’m all out of good lines today,” he sighs. “No updates either, although Adriana dropped that kid of yours off so she could go on a date—he just went to the bathroom but should be back soon if you want to get _something_ out of this call at least.”

“I don’t need updates to get something out of calling you, Buck,” Eddie replies, an odd note in his voice that Buck can’t quite place. It vanishes as he continues—

“And I can remind my sister that you’re not a babysitter. Just because Chris loves hanging out in the office doesn’t mean you can’t say no.”

“It’s fine, Eddie. Really, he’s been the best part of my day.” Buck leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. The exhaustion of the past several days sinks into his bones making his whole body feel like dead weight. “How are things on your end?”

Eddie makes a sound of irritation. “Apparently the local guys down here got some sort of ominous ‘stop investigating or you’ll be next’ message a few days ago that they neglected to tell us anything about until a few minutes ago. Bobby should have more for you on that in a bit—I’m just doing a coffee run, he was still yelling at them when I left.”

“Jesus,” Buck says, adding several more colorful swears in his head. “Don’t they know we can’t do our jobs if they don’t tell us everything? You would think they might want to actually catch the serial killer who likes burying people alive.” 

“You’d think,” Eddie agrees, sounding almost as tired as Buck feels. “But I guess—“

There’s a strange noise on the other end of the line, and then sounds of a fight—garbled shouts and impact noises. 

Buck’s stomach fills with ice, then the world drops out from under him entirely when he hears a gunshot. There’s more commotion for a few moments, and then deathly silence. 

“Eddie? Eddie!” Buck shouts into his headset. More silence, and then, with the voice hidden by a modulator—

“You know the drill, agent. Clock’s ticking.” 

And the line goes dead.

Buck can barely feel his fingers when he fumbles for his cell, his whole body numb but moving on autopilot.

_I need you to pick up Christopher ASAP_ , he texts. _I can’t have him here right now._

Adriana texts back immediately. _What happened to Eddie?_

She’s always been able to read between the lines better than most. 

_I don’t know yet_ , he replies, and it’s all he manages before his hands start shaking enough that the phone clatters to his desk. He closes them into fists and tries to breathe. 

_I’ll be there in ten. I’m right down the street_ , she says. 

Right as the phone buzzes, his email pings. Sender unknown. Subject line: Tick, tock. 

Buck knows exactly what he’ll find if he opens it. A clock counting down from twelve hours. Twelve hours to find Eddie before he’s dead. 

His office door opens. Christopher.

Buck forces a smile and clears his throat, trying to sound as normal as possible.

“Hey, buddy. I just got slammed with a bunch of top secret stuff, so I can’t have you in here right now—I’ll make it up to you another day, okay? Your auntie is coming to pick you up. Do you think you could go wait with Patricia at reception for me so I can make some phone calls?”

Chris squints at him from behind his glasses, his gaze sharp and considering for all that he’s just a kid. And Buck doesn’t breathe for a moment, not knowing what he’ll do if he has to explain anything to Eddie’s _child_ right now.

But if Christopher sees through anything, he doesn’t call him on it. “Okay. Can I borrow that book on computers though?” 

“Sure, of course. No problem.” 

When Chris leaves again, Buck exhales for what feels like the first time in years. And then he calls Maddie.

* * *

_Ten months earlier_

Maddie Buckley blinks down at the young boy that pulls open the door to what she thinks is her brother’s apartment, all thoughts and expectations immediately flying out of her head. The only thing that remains is a stray, _I know I’ve missed a lot, but I didn’t think I missed that much_.

She’s pretty sure she would have known if Buck had a kid.

“Um...hi,” she says. “Does Evan Buckley live here?”

“ _I_ live here,” the boy replies. “With my dad. We don’t know an Evan though.”

Before Maddie can say another word, a woman comes around the corner, sweeping her dark, curly hair up into a messy ponytail as she sighs.

“Christopher, what have we said about answering the door by yourself?”

“Not to do it,” the boy—Christopher—mumbles before insisting, “but Auntie A, I’m not by myself—you’re right here!”

“Lord save me from the smart ones,” the woman says, shaking her head with a rueful smile. “Be that as it may, can you please finish cleaning up the Legos on the kitchen table so we can have lunch soon? Thank you.”

She turns to Maddie then and offers a hand. “Hi there. Adriana Diaz—what can I do for you?”

Maddie shakes the offered hand and tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I was hoping that Evan Buckley lived here? But at this point, I’m assuming I got the address wrong. Unless you know him?”

“Maybe,” Adriana replies. “Depends who’s asking.”

“Maddie Buckley. I’m—”

“The sister.” Adriana tips her head, her gaze considering. Maddie doesn’t flinch at the scrutiny, just stares back until Adriana’s lips quirk up, apparently satisfied with her silent calculation. 

“You were almost right,” she says then. “Buck lives across the hall. If you were hoping to stay, I can let you in, show you around the place, but he’s actually out in the field for once with the rest of his team. Don’t know exactly when they’ll be back.”

It’s Maddie’s turn to look at the other woman in a new light. “Are the two of you...close then?”

Adriana laughs at that. “Not the way I’m assuming you’re thinking. I’m definitely not his girlfriend. This is my brother’s place—he’s in the BAU too. Buck’s pretty much his best friend. I’m just here because I watch my nephew when Eddie’s on assignment.”

“Well that’s convenient. Don’t tell me you work for the FBI as well.”

“Pentagon.” Adriana winks. “Hang tight, I’ll grab the keys. Chris—” She calls. “I’m going across the hall for a couple minutes. Do _not_ open the door for strangers.” 

“Yes, Auntie A!”

Adriana picks up a set of keys from a bowl on a side table and joins Maddie in the hallway, closing and locking the door behind her. In a few more steps, they’re in Buck’s apartment and Adriana flicks on the lights. 

“So, you’ll have to forgive me for being nosy—”

“Will I?” Maddie asks. Adriana huffs a laugh.

“Fair enough,” she acknowledges. “But—from what Buck’s said, you got married and then stopped talking to him a few years ago. And now you just show up without warning?” 

Maddie swallows hard, stalling by looking around and setting her suitcase down by the couch. 

“Not really your business, is it?”

“Like I said, he’s my brother’s best friend. And he spends a lot of time with my nephew. Just because I’m not his girlfriend doesn’t mean we’re _not_ close,” Adriana replies. She leans against the wall by the door. “If he’d known you were coming, he would have told me. So. Why are you here? What happened to your husband?”

Maddie sighs. “My husband was an abusive piece of shit and now he’s dead. And I’m here because I used to work for the BAU years ago and I have an interview with Athena Grant on Tuesday. Although I suppose if they’re on assignment that’s probably contingent on them wrapping up. I didn’t tell Buck I was coming because I don’t have his cell number. Good enough for you?”

Adriana looks somewhat abashed. “Sorry. Had to ask.”

“It’s fine,” Maddie assures. “You’re protecting your family. I get it.” 

“I’ll tell you what though—you should come over tonight. Have a drink. If you’re sticking around, we should get to know each other.”

When was the last time she had friends? Before Doug, really. 

“I’d like that,” Maddie says quietly. “I’d like that a lot.”

Adriana scribbles something on a pad stuck to the refrigerator. “That’s Buck’s cell, so you have it. He won’t answer while he’s working if he’s in the field, but he’ll check his messages.”

She drops the spare keys on the counter. “I should get back to Christopher. But I’m right across the hall if you need anything.”

“Adriana...thank you.”

The other woman smiles. “You’re welcome. And hey—welcome back.”

“It’s not official yet,” Maddie points out.

“It will be. Athena has a tough shell, but she’s got a soft spot for strays. And yes, I am including my brother in that.”

“And mine?” 

Adriana pauses. Opens her mouth, closes it. “You’ve been gone a long time,” she says finally. “A lot of things have happened.”

Maddie considers that carefully, pressing her lips together as she glances at the number on the fridge. 

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Three days later, she finds herself sitting on the other side of a desk from the unit chief of the BAU. 

“Well, if you’re sure this is where you want to be—welcome back to the BAU. Special Agent Buckley,” Athena Grant says. 

Maddie smiles. “Thank you, Director Grant. I’m glad to be here.”

It’s time for a fresh start.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning that the second half of this chapter contains some discussion of/allusion to the end of Maddie's abusive marriage and Doug's death. It's slightly altered from the ending we see in canon (although I don't think it's any worse), and it's not explicit, but if you're sensitive to that, this is your heads up. I haven't finished the fic so I can't promise 100%, but I'm fairly certain it won't be mentioned again after this chapter except as the general fact that she was in an abusive relationship and ended up cut off from her family as a result.

_Present_

The countdown clock isn’t running on the screen. Rather, Buck has a separate timer on his desk ticking down to eight hours as he continues typing furiously while arguing over his headset.

“With all due respect, sir, we are _wasting time_ ,” he says. “This guy got either arrogant or pissed and it made him sloppy. He took Eddie from a parking lot, he left a witness—”

“And we are following up on all of those things, Buck,” Bobby replies evenly. “The car was abandoned, we know it was stolen, we’re running prints, blood, everything. If this guy is in any system, we will find him. If he shows up at a hospital, we will find him. In the meantime, we just need—”

“Patience, I know, you’ve said,” Buck snaps back. “But that requires time, which we don’t have. Right now, Eddie is underground somewhere, maybe conscious, maybe not. Sure, I could send you all the coordinates to every open grave plot in every cemetery in a hundred miles, but there’s no guarantee that you would be able to check all of them in time. Or that he’s even in any of them. Let me try and hack the email.”

“We don’t know that it’s not a virus. You could compromise the whole system.”

“Well, maybe that’s a risk I’m willing to take!”

“Agent.” Bobby’s voice is hard, if quiet. “You’re out of line. And too close to this. Get yourself together or I will remove you from this case. Are we clear?”

Buck bites his lip nearly hard enough to bleed.

“Yes, sir, we’re clear,” he grits out.

“Okay. Send me the coordinates. We’ll start organizing search teams.”

The call ends and Buck rips off the headset and throws it down on the desk. He feels like his skin is too tight for his body, like he wants to crawl out of it. More than anything though, he wants to not be stuck behind a desk at Quantico when everyone else is hundreds of miles away in Wisconsin. He wants to be out there, wants to search with them, would dig in the dirt with his bare hands if he could, if it would find Eddie.

He finishes compiling the data to send to Bobby and sends it off, sitting back in his chair and glaring at the email from the unsub sitting in his inbox, mocking him. He sighs and rubs at his eyes before turning to a different screen, running an algorithm to sort through traffic cam footage trying to track the stolen car. As he does, his office door opens.

“Knock, knock.” Adriana leans against the frame, a takeout container in her hands. “I’m not here to get in the way, just wanted to bring you some dinner. Figured you wouldn’t eat otherwise.”

Buck pushes back on the instinct to say he’s not hungry. He slumps down in the chair and rakes his hands through his hair.

“Where’s Chris?”

“Rooting through Eddie’s desk for post-its. I said if he found any, he could leave a note for when Eddie gets back.”

“When,” Buck repeats. “Fuck.”

“Any news?” She asks, stepping into the office and setting the container on the edge of his desk.

Buck shakes his head. “They found Eddie’s gun where he was taken. His phone—shattered. A woman in the coffee shop caught the end of it after she heard Eddie’s gun go off. Said she saw a white guy, a little over six feet, in a ski mask, gave us a partial license plate from the car—bunch of dead ends so far. We found the car abandoned, but Eddie’s still missing.”

Adriana swallows hard. Takes a breath. Then she rolls her shoulders and her face settles in a calm mask.

“Okay,” she says quietly. “Okay. Thank you. For telling me.”

“Have you called Sophia?” He asks. She shakes her head. 

“I’m not going to tell anyone else in the family until it would actually matter. There’s no point right now. It would just—just worry them when there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“Even Chris?”

The mask slips for a moment as Adriana rubs at her forehead. 

“He’s been through so much in his life already. I just want to protect him,” she replies. “I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, but if I can give him a few more hours of believing that his dad is invincible, I’m going to. As long as I’m not trying to manage everyone else, I can at least pretend to be okay.”

She levels him with a searching look. “Are _you_ okay?”

Buck looks away, glad to have the excuse of checking the monitors. He’s pretty sure they both know the answer to that question anyway.

“I don’t have time not to be,” he says finally. Adriana bites her lip and nods.

“Yeah. Okay.” She knocks on the doorframe once and pushes off. “I’ll leave you to it. But seriously, eat that. If you kill yourself working too hard, Eddie’s going to complain to _me_ whenever they replace his phone and I really can’t have that.”

The levity she was aiming for falls flat, but Buck manages a small smile anyway, appreciating the attempt. 

“Yeah, that would be—” Abruptly, Buck cuts himself off and he finds himself staring at his email again, his mind racing from thread to thread. He knows how this unsub works, burying his victims alive and sending the countdown to their loved ones with demands for money or other ransoms within the time—not that giving him what he wants ever actually changes the outcome. But he watches them, researches them, their families, contacts. Eddie is random though, has to be when there was no guarantee Eddie would be out alone, when the team hasn’t even been there three whole days and no one knew they were coming except the local police department.

But he’s the one who got the email. Directly. Even though Eddie’s phone was left crushed at the scene and there wouldn’t have been time for a scroll through his contacts. So how did the unsub know to send it to him? Even if he researched the team, Buck’s email isn’t readily available to the public, and he’s not even on the ground with everyone else so why—

He scrambles for his headset, dialing Maddie before he can think of anything else. In the background he’s vaguely aware of his office door closing and he makes a mental note to apologize to Adriana for zoning out later, but he’s pretty sure she won’t mind if this lead pans out.

“Buck? What do you have?” Maddie asks when she picks up.

“What made you rule out the possibility that the unsub is law enforcement?” He asks.

“What? Um...I don’t think we ever did exactly,” she replies. “It didn’t seem quite as likely as some other options, but we didn’t say—why? Did you find something?”

Buck exhales shakily. “No, not technically. Just a hunch.”

Maddie pauses for a moment and he thinks she’s going to ask him to explain, to waste more time, but instead she just says—

“What do you need?”

_Thank you_ , Buck sends up as a silent prayer to any god that might be listening.

“Eddie said there was some sort of threatening letter sent to the station demanding that they stop the investigation. I want a copy and any other information you have about that—statements, anything. And then I want a list of every person in that precinct who even looked sideways at this file.”

“Sounds like a hell of a hunch,” she says.

“I’m right, Maddie,” Buck insists. “I know I’m right. Just help me prove it. Please.”

“Okay. Give me a few minutes.” 

As she hangs up, Buck turns to another monitor and pulls up the police department’s intranet. 

“Alright, baby, what have you got for me?” He asks under his breath. And he starts to type.

* * *

_Eight months earlier_

The last place Maddie wants to be is at a bar. She wants to be at home—or at least, at Buck’s place, since she still hasn’t gotten around to vacating Buck’s guest room—wants to sink into a bath and scrub at her skin and hair until the phantom smell of smoke finally dissipates. Just because it’s been over a day since they caught the serial arsonist they were looking for doesn’t mean she’s stopped smelling it, stopped seeing flames flickering at the corners of her vision or the backs of her eyelids. 

But everyone else had wanted to celebrate and Maddie wanted to avoid getting called into Athena’s office again for another “casual check-in” to see how she’s “settling in” with her new team two months into her new hire probationary period. Which is why she’s sitting at a table while Buck and Eddie and Hen play pool a few steps away trying to relax even as the noise level and number of people in the room have her instincts on high alert and her shoulders so tight she can feel the beginnings of a tension headache.

When a glass of wine appears in front of her, she jumps before registering that the figure sliding into the chair across from her is just Howie. 

“You looked like you could use a refill,” he says, nodding at the glass as he takes off his jacket. “Sorry I’m late, I was finishing up some paperwork. Wanted to really close out the week before celebrating the win.”

“Smart,” she replies as she takes a sip. 

“I have my moments.”

They fall into an awkward silence as they watch their other coworkers, and Maddie hates it. Hates that she feels more uncomfortable than she had before. Hates that there is a piece of her that is hyper-aware of the fact that she is in a social setting and relatively alone with a man she is not related to. Hates that there is still an itch of _danger, bad, wrong_ under her skin that she can’t stop even though she knows it’s unreasonable. 

More than anything, she hates the fact that it’s been six months and Doug still has power over her even from the grave. 

It’s that thought that keeps her stubbornly in the seat, even more than any desire to prove to Athena that she can be a team player and socialize with her colleagues. Besides which, she’s already let him win once during the week and she doesn’t want it to happen again. 

Maddie takes a long swallow from her wine and clears her throat, even if she keeps her gaze fixed straight ahead at the pool game. “I don’t think I said thank you for the other day,” she says. “Both for what you did and for not telling Bobby or Athena.”

Howie shakes his head. “You don’t have to thank me for that. We’ve all had those moments.”

“I froze in the middle of a burning hallway,” she shoots back, and even she can hear the judgment in her voice. Directed at herself, of course. 

She can barely remember it, is what eats at her the most. She recalls being in a classroom at the university they were canvassing and hearing the fire alarm go off, remembers leaving and starting for the entrance only to turn down a hallway where flames were licking up the walls. And then it was like her feet were glued to the floor, her ears filling with white noise as her body went numb. She still doesn’t know how long she stood there, but she knows that at some point Howie stumbled across her on his own way out and grabbed her arm with a strength she wouldn’t have expected from him before pulling her to a safe exit.

“And yesterday you took down the unsub before she could set another fire and saved the lives of at least three people,” he replies with a shrug. He leans back in his chair and takes a pull from his beer. “Not a bad week for you, all things considered.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” she admits. She chances a look over at him, but there’s no judgment or calculation in his gaze. Instead, his face is warm and open and friendly, his eyes kind, and a corner of the wall she’s built up crumbles away. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Howie looks up at the ceiling and sighs. “Six years ago, before I was a profiler, I was just a regular agent. My best friend Kevin was my partner—we’d grown up together, gone through the academy together—and we got assigned to a task force that was supposed to carry out a big RICO bust. I was part of the planning team and we missed something in the plans for the warehouse we were going into. And because of that, Kevin was killed by a sniper, right in front of me. I couldn’t fire a gun for two months and still get twitchy every time we get a case involving long distance weaponry.”

He looks back at her. “It’s not my place to tell you what they are, but there’s not a single one of us who doesn’t have a story like that. So you have some issues with fire—if we get another arson case, now I know you might need a little extra help. There’s no shame in that. We’re a team—you can trust us to have your back.”

Maddie holds Howie’s gaze for a long moment and some of the tension bleeds out of her shoulders. There’s a secret caught in her throat and for a moment she wants so badly to put it behind her because sometimes she still feels like she’s running and all she wants more than anything is to just stand still.

“Six months ago, I tried to leave my husband and he almost killed me,” she says. “I managed to stab him with a kitchen knife and locked myself in the master bathroom. And as he was bleeding out, he set the house on fire. I spent two weeks in the hospital recovering from smoke inhalation and other injuries and I couldn’t call my brother because we hadn’t spoken in three years and I didn’t have his number. And I couldn’t call my parents because I was ashamed. And I froze in that hallway the other day...because I was back in that bathroom with no way out and I couldn’t breathe.”

It feels like a benediction when Maddie drains the rest of her glass.

Howie looks at her in silence for a moment and then hums.

“You want to know what I think?” He asks.

“Sure.”

“I think you’re pretty damn brave,” he replies. “And I believe this place has a karaoke machine around somewhere. So if you want, you could take some of that bravery and pick a song with me.”

It catches Maddie off guard enough that she bursts out laughing. And once she starts, she can’t stop—it’s as if a dam inside her has burst and it’s all bubbling up and flooding out, spilling over, and even when she starts crying, she’s still laughing because she’s _alive, alive, alive_.

“Everything okay over here?” Buck asks, his face caught between amusement and concern as he rests a hand on her shoulder.

Maddie swipes at her eyes as her giggles dissipate and nods.

“You know what, it really is,” she says, and when she looks back at Howie her smile is bright. “We were just about to do some karaoke.”

He smiles back and it warms her from the inside out.


	3. Chapter 3

_Present_

Four hours. Four hours left on the clock, four since Buck made the connection, two since he found the killer, one since Chim made an arrest.

And they still don’t have Eddie back.

Buck swears as he stares at the video feed on his main monitor showing Officer Daryl Price sitting calmly at the table in an interrogation room as Bobby thumbs through his employment file across from him. Normally, he appreciates Bobby’s tactics—calm and measured and polite, always giving the suspect just enough conversational rope to hang themselves with. Normally, he would enjoy watching any of his team work a confession out of someone. But a confession doesn’t help unless Price admits to where Eddie is and frankly, Buck isn’t going to be comforted by him going to prison if Eddie dies.

“I can tell you’re good at your job, Officer Price,” Bobby says over the feed. “Highest number of arrests and case closures in your department. I’m surprised you haven’t been promoted more.”

“Keep getting passed over,” Price replies, his nose flaring. “They don’t care about hard work here anymore.”

Bobby hums and flips open another file. “Or maybe it’s because those arrests and closures don’t amount to much when your prime suspects keep getting released without charge or acquitted for lack of evidence. Don’t tell me you’ve been cutting corners, officer.”

“Not my fault the damn DAs are so lousy they couldn’t convict their own asses of taking a shit,” he shoots back.

“I understand,” Bobby says. “You didn’t have a choice. You knew all those people were guilty. You were just trying to bring them to justice.”

Buck’s phone rings, pulling his focus away from the screen. “What?” He snaps as he mutes the video feed.

“Easy, tiger. Don’t bite my head off,” Hen says. “The guys I took out to Oakridge Cemetery just finished their sweep. There’s nothing here—you can cross it off the list.”

Buck turns his chair to the monitor with the list of cemeteries open and makes the note, the keys clicking savagely before he hits save and closes out of the Oakridge window. 

“You heading back to the precinct?” He asks.

“Yeah, should be there in a few minutes.”

“Good. Maybe you can get Bobby to stop fucking around with this guy.”

“I’m sure that isn’t what’s happening,” she replies.

“He hasn’t even _asked_ about Eddie!”

“You’re not a rookie, Buck, you know how this works. He’s laying the trap, building a foundation, establishing a relationship so that either this guy will confess outright or he’ll let something slip that will tell us where Eddie is.” Hen pauses. “When was the last time you took a break, Buck?”

Buck glances at the takeout container at the corner of his desk—he’d managed a few bites before falling down another rabbit hole, but he imagines it’s stone cold now.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“You’re not,” she replies. “None of us are. Look, just—take ten minutes away from your batcave. Drink some water, take a lap around the building, anything. It’ll be good for you.”

“Finding Eddie would be good for me.”

“Buck…”

He puts his elbows on the desk, drops his head in his hands—

“I found the unsub, Hen,” he says, his voice cracking. “ _I_ did that. I made the connection, I proved it was him—me.”

Hen’s voice is soft. “We know you did, Buck.”

“So why the fuck can’t I figure out where this son of a bitch took my best friend?”

Another pause. 

“Take a break,” she repeats quietly. “You’ve done your job—let us take over for a few minutes and do ours. Come back to the computers with fresh eyes.”

And then, “You’re not the only one who cares about him, Buck. We’re going to get him back.”

Buck squeezes his eyes shut.

“I know. I know.”

It keeps repeating in his head even after the line cuts out, as he pushes back his chair and leaves his office.

If he keeps thinking it, maybe he’ll start believing it.

* * *

_Six months earlier_

“Buck’s house of pleasure and pain—which one are you looking for today?”

Maddie has just taken a sip of water when Buck picks up the call and she abruptly chokes and ends up coughing for several seconds. Next to her, Howie snorts, Hen covers her mouth to hide a smile, and across the table, Bobby sighs heavily and pinches the bridge of his nose.

Eddie meanwhile stares at the phone in his hand as his face floods with pink, although Maddie is sure she can still see a smile lingering around his mouth.

“Um, Buck...you’re on speaker.”

The line is quiet for a moment.

“Ah,” Buck says finally. “So, pain then.” 

Hen’s shoulders start shaking then as she stifles her laughter and Bobby moves to rubbing at his forehead in defeat.

“Alright, can we please keep it professional, agents,” Bobby sighs. When he reaches for the phone, Eddie slides it to the center of the table.

“I’ve never been professional a day in my life, bossman,” Buck replies.

“Now that I believe. But moving _on_ , you have information for us?” 

Maddie tunes most of the briefing out, distracted as her mind sticks on Buck’s last statement. Mostly because it’s...wrong. Buck is professional all the time, for the most part—at least as professional as any of the rest of them barring Bobby and Athena—which is to say that sure he can be snarky and sarcastic and make jokes, but she hasn’t known him to cross a line. Except, maybe, with Eddie.

She turns that thought over in her mind, labeling a mental board with a hypothesis and replaying memories from the last several months in that new light. Howie nudges her shoulder when the call ends, but even then she notices that it doesn’t _really_ end—Eddie swipes the phone from the table and takes it off of speaker, putting it to his ear and dropping his voice as he walks off.

Suddenly, she feels like an idiot. She’s supposed to be a profiler and yet she missed something so glaring right under her nose?

“Howie,” Maddie says. “What’s going on between Eddie and Buck?”

Howie rolls his eyes to the ceiling as Hen, still within earshot, starts laughing again.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He replies. “Okay— _technically_? Nothing. At least nothing that any of us know about, besides all—” He gestures aimlessly in the air. “—that. Much to the dismay of my wallet.”

“By which he means, they’ve been in love with each other for years, but neither of them is willing to admit it, so the betting pool we’ve had going keeps getting extended for longer periods,” Hen adds. “It’s become a bit of a tradition that the first loser in each round takes everyone out for drinks before we extend it again. So far, Chim here has lost every time.”

“Look, I really thought Buck getting shot was going to do it—it’s not my fault they’re impossible.”

“You should really know better by—”

“Wait—” Maddie interrupts. “Buck got _shot_?”

Howie and Hen both go quiet and exchange looks.

“He didn’t tell you?”

“I think I would remember hearing that my brother was shot,” she replies. 

Another look. Maddie feels like something is clawing at her insides, a bitter whisper of _you should have been there_ threading through her mind.

“Would you two stop telepathically communicating and just tell me what happened?”

“Look, Maddie, it wasn’t that—” Hen starts before shaking her head. “—okay, it _was_ serious, but—”

“What was serious?” Eddie asks, coming up from behind them. 

Hen presses her lips together and clears her throat. Howie shifts his weight.

“Maddie didn’t know Buck got shot,” he explains finally. The words come slowly, like he really doesn’t want to say them.

“Were you here when it happened?” Maddie asks. “He never said a word to me.”

Eddie’s face shutters immediately, his shoulders going tight. 

“Yeah, I was here,” he says. His voice is carefully even when he adds, “It was my fault.”

He looks at Hen. “Buck says he and Adriana can definitely order the cake for Karen’s surprise party, he just wants to know if you want constellations or little planets as the decoration.”

He glances back at Maddie then as if he wants to say something, but seems to think better of it.

“I’m going to go look through the victim files again,” he says as he starts walking away. “See if there’s anything we missed.”

“We’ve been through those a hundred times,” Howie says quietly as they all watch Eddie leave the room.

“Let him go,” Hen replies. “You know he doesn’t like talking about it.”

Maddie looks between the two of them. “Is it true? That it was Eddie’s fault?”

Hen sighs. “Of course not. But that hasn’t stopped him from blaming himself anyway. And _that_ ,” she directs at Howie, “is why they were never going to get together right after it happened.”

She walks away then and Maddie drags a hand through her hair. “I didn’t realize ‘what’s going on between my brother and his best friend’ would be such a charged topic.”

“Well, you’ve only been here—what, four months?” Howie replies. “There are plenty more minefields to discover.”

It may be a joke, but Maddie can’t seem to bring herself to smile.

“You know, when I first met Adriana, she said I missed a lot while I was gone,” she says, sinking back down into her seat at the conference table. “And I understood that logically—I left him, I left my baby brother for years, I wasn’t _here_ for all the big moments, good and bad and in between. But I guess I still thought that he would tell me about them? The things I missed. And I don’t know how to read him as well anymore or how to ask about what I don’t know because I’ve never had to ask before. He’s never kept secrets from me. Not about anything that mattered.”

“You weren’t jet setting around the world having an amazing time cutting off your family, Maddie,” Howie says. “You were in an abusive marriage—that’s not your fault. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

_Can’t I?_ She thinks, and immediately corrects herself. She’s getting better at it, at refusing the negativity, the judgment, but it’s hard to catch sometimes.

Maddie sighs and rubs at her eyes. “Yeah. I know. Anyway, we should probably get back to work if we want to get out of the middle of nowhere Ohio anytime soon.”

“If you want to talk…”

She manages a small smile. “I know where to find you.”

That night, however, Maddie finds herself wandering instead to Eddie’s room. When he opens the door, he looks resigned and exhausted, the thick layer of scruff edging his jaw a good sign that they’ve all been running themselves ragged.

“Can we talk?” She asks.

“Yeah,” he sighs, stepping aside to let her in.

“I didn’t know Buck didn’t tell you about the shooting,” he adds as he closes the door behind her. “I would have told him to if I had.”

“Really?” 

Eddie shrugs and runs a hand over his jaw as he sits down on the edge of the bed. “I wouldn’t have _made_ him or anything like that—not that anyone can make Buck do anything he doesn’t want to do—but...yeah. I’ve kept a lot of shit from my older sister throughout my life, usually because I felt like I was protecting her from something. And I know Adriana has hidden things from me for the same reason, and Sophia isn’t always an open book either, but between the three of us...there are some things I _should_ have told them sooner because they could have helped, and they wanted to help, and I regret not just letting them be there when I needed them the most.”

He shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t mean to make it sound like Buck is in crisis or anything—as far as I know, he’s as okay as anyone could be after something like that—I’m just saying...I have sisters. So I get why you want to know and why he didn’t tell you and also why he should have.”

“Thank you,” Maddie replies. “I’m not—I don’t want you to break his confidence or anything—”

“It’s fine,” Eddie assures. “Most of it is my story anyway. And besides, I texted him earlier letting him know that you knew.”

Maddie sits down in the desk chair and waits. Eddie looks down at his hands, wets his lips—

“It was about a year and a half ago,” he says finally. “I had just finished my probationary period with the BAU after transferring from the El Paso field office when I got a call from my old boss that this guy I helped put away in my early years as an agent—Jeremy Fisher—had been released from prison early. Good behavior.”

He rolls his shoulders to work the growing tension out. “Back then—look, I knew he killed his wife. Everyone in the damn office knew he killed his wife. Probably three other women as well. But we couldn’t prove it. He was really good. Less good at hiding his coke habit though. So we busted him for that and away he went.”

“He was a freelance photographer. Before. After, he said that the press around our investigation into his wife, his arrest, drug conviction—he said it ruined his reputation and he couldn’t work.”

“He blamed you,” Maddie fills in, and Eddie tips his head in acknowledgment, a bitter twist to his lips.

“About two weeks after I got the call, there was an envelope delivered to me at work,” he continues. “It was three pictures of me picking up Christopher from school with my face slashed out in red marker. Taken from a long distance lens.” 

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Eddie clears his throat roughly. “Anyway, long story short, Buck and I were in and out of each other’s places so much that Fisher didn’t actually know which one was mine. So when he finally made his move, he picked the wrong one. He took Buck to a construction site to draw me out. I went, but I thought I could read him, thought I could control the situation, so I tried to convince Fisher that Buck didn’t actually matter to me, that he couldn’t hurt me by hurting him. He shot Buck in the leg to call my bluff. By the time we finally got out of there...if we had been much longer, he might have lost it. As it was, it was a hard surgery, and he spent months in physical therapy.”

Maddie is quiet as Eddie trails off. She can read the guilt in every line of the other man, even as she privately agrees with Hen that it wasn’t his fault. It’s a risk they all take, that one day someone they take down will hold a grudge sharp enough to want to hurt them. Or the people they care about.

“What happened to Fisher?” She asks.

Eddie meets her eyes. “Bobby killed him. When SWAT finally took the site.”

She nods. _Good_. 

“Well,” Maddie sighs. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you were there. That you’ve _been_ here. For him. When I…” _Wasn’t._

“It’s not exactly one-sided,” Eddie replies. “He’s stuck with me through a lot as well.”

There’s a note to his voice, and a look that passes over his face that brings another question on the tip of her tongue. It’s one that she has no right to ask. But she blames the late hour for the fact that it spills out anyway.

“Eddie? Are you in love with my brother?”

There’s a long pause. Then Eddie huffs a laugh and rubs a hand over his face. 

“We’re both profilers here, Maddie,” he says. “I think if you’ve seen enough to make you want to ask that question, you already know the answer.”

“Why haven’t you told him?” She shakes her head and pushes herself out of the chair. “Sorry—that _really_ is none of my business. I should go.”

“It’s a fair question.” Eddie catches his lower lip between his teeth for a moment before pushing himself up as well. “I suppose I figure it’s just not worth the risk. Besides, he’s still in love with—”

Maddie’s eyebrows shoot up as he cuts himself off.

“In love with who?”

But Eddie shakes his head. “That one really isn’t my place to talk about.”

“What happened to ‘I get it, I have sisters too’?” She teases gently even as she opens the door. His lips curve, but he doesn’t budge.

“Goodnight, Maddie.”

“Get some sleep,” she replies.

She goes to bed with that last little revelation playing over in her head.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this chapter we have officially passed 10k because clearly I have no control over anything anymore.

_Present_

_Hours remaining: ?_

There’s water dripping somewhere. It seems to fall in time with the throbbing in his head. 

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

He’s cold, too, his back and legs soaked through—oh. He’s lying in some of the water. 

The air is thick and musty and when Eddie finally forces his eyes open, the world around him is pitch black. His jacket is missing, and oddly there’s a loose cable and carabiner clipped to the back of his suspenders, but he isn’t bound, and he fumbles for the small utility pouch still clipped to a belt loop and tucked just inside his waistband. It doesn’t have much—mostly a lighter and a swiss army knife, neither of which he can think of a good use for at the moment—but there’s a thumb-sized flashlight that he flicks on.

A wave of dizziness crashes into him as he tries to push himself up on his knees, and he has to take a moment to breathe through it so he doesn’t pass out again.

He’s in some sort of hollowed out pocket in the earth, one side all rocks and packed dirt and the same above him. But on the other side, there’s an opening—however he got in, he assumes—and when he looks out and up—

Light. A single faint beam of moonlight filtering down from the faintest opening in—

Is that a well cover?

A well.

He’s down a well. Too far down to have any hope of climbing his way up, but not quite in as dire straits as the unsub’s other victims.

Maybe.

Although he is cold. And so very tired. He’s pretty sure he shouldn’t close his eyes again.

His head _aches_. 

“Hello?” Eddie’s voice cracks, even quiet and raspy as it is. He forces himself to shout, even if it makes him wince. “Hello? Can anyone hear me? I’m alive down here!”

There’s no response that comes. Just the echo of his own voice.

_I’m alive, alive, alive._

_For now._

* * *

_Four months earlier_

“Clock’s ticking,” Athena says, closing her copy of the file and looking around the conference table at the rest of the team. “There’s already one new body. If the pattern holds, we can expect two more before this guy goes to ground again—I want to be wheels up in another three hours. Including you, Buck.”

“It’ll take me at least half that just to get my computers together,” he replies, pushing back his chair and starting toward the kitchenette in the corner to refill his empty coffee mug. “You know none of these places ever have any good toys.”

“Guess you’ll have to pack quick then.”

“Are we sure these cases are related?” Maddie asks, flipping through the file. “Seems like kind of a leap. Different victim profiles, different MOs—how are we supposed to track someone like this?”

“How did we get this case, anyway?” Howie adds. “I don’t remember seeing it come in.”

Athena clears her throat. “It was referred directly to me,” she replies. “I had the same questions when it was first brought to my attention, but the argument in favor of us exercising jurisdiction was...compelling.”

“Referred by who?” Hen asks.

Athena turns back to the whiteboard on the wall, fiddling with a magnet affixing one of the crime scene photos to it.

“It’s in the file.”

Maddie flips to the last page. “By the person in this statement? Who is this...Dr. Abby Clark?”

Eddie’s pencil snaps in half. Across the room, Buck drops his mug and it shatters on the floor.

Maddie stares. Everyone else seems to be suddenly very interested in their files. 

“Sorry. Butterfingers,” Buck says, his voice distant. He shakes his head. “Wow, we really don’t have a broom in here, do we? I should go find one—clean this up.”

He’s out of the room before anyone can say anything.

“Anyone want to fill me in here?” Maddie says, glancing around.

“Dr. Clark used to work here,” Athena replies. “Now she teaches at Northwestern and occasionally consults. She refers cases sometimes if she feels like local officials are out of their depth.” 

“Is she meeting us in Chicago?” Eddie asks. His eyes are fixed on the pages in front of him, but his jaw is tense.

Athena pauses. “Yes. She is. Now, if there aren’t any more questions—dismissed. We can talk more on the plane.”

Eddie’s out of the room like a shot. Hen pushes back her chair more slowly, taking her time putting her file back in order, but then she’s gone as well. Bobby walks over to Athena and puts a gentle hand on her arm, the two of them falling into a low, murmured conversation that Maddie can’t catch.

“Well,” Howie says quietly. “This should be...something.”

“I’m recalling you said something a little while back about minefields?” Maddie replies.

“Yeah. This is definitely another one of them.” He makes a face. “More than one, honestly. Although, in this case, bombs...may not be the most tactful metaphor.”

He grabs his suit jacket off the back of his own chair and pulls it on. “Buck might be awhile. You want a ride to your place to pick up your go-bag?”

“Sure, that would be good,” she agrees. “Thanks.”

Maddie waits until they’re in the car before she asks. “So, am I going to get the story or do I have to guess and you can just tell me if I’m right?”

Howie huffs a laugh as he backs out of his parking space. “No, I’ll tell you. If we’re going to be working with her, you should know.”

He pauses to scan his badge at the exit to the garage, but as soon as they’re clear he takes a breath.

“Okay. Right. So, Abby. Like Athena said, she used to be an agent—she didn’t like Quantico that much, so she spent a long time bouncing around the field offices helping with investigations that the BAU just didn’t quite have the capacity to take on—if you missed her when you were here the first time, that’s probably why. But she finally transferred in officially about three and a half years ago? Not too long after Bobby joined, and maybe six months before Buck.” 

“The thing you have to understand,” Howie adds when he stops at the next intersection, “is that Abby was a good agent. Really. She’s an amazing profiler—no matter what else has happened, that’s still true, and there’s not one of us who doesn’t at least respect her work. There’s a reason Athena still picks up the phone every time she calls.”

“Eddie doesn’t like her,” Maddie points out, more curious than ever, stray pieces of information not quite fitting the rest of the picture forming in her head.

“Eddie doesn’t _know_ her,” Howie replies. “Eddie’s never worked with her, he only knows the after. How all of us—and especially Buck—were after she left.”

“What happened?”

The light changes.

“In general?” He asks carefully. “Or with her and Buck? Because I only know the full answer to one of those.”

“Both.”

“Is the name Peter Jacobsen familiar to you?” 

Maddie thinks for a moment. “Vaguely maybe, but I’m not placing it,” she admits.

“He liked making bombs,” Howie explains, the thread of disgust clear in his voice. “Thought it was like art, just loved making bombs and blowing things up. Sometimes even people.”

“Cheery.”

“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, Abby was tapped to head up a task force to catch him. We were swamped at the time, up to our ears in other cases, and she had the skills and seniority to handle it herself if only one of us could. And she did. Built a profile, identified him, started closing in—it all ended in a standoff after he took a hostage.”

Howie’s throat works as he swallows hard. “He surrendered. But it was just a trick. He walked out, Abby sent six agents into a warehouse to secure the building and the hostage...and then he blew the whole thing up. Went to prison laughing with seven more deaths on his charge sheet and Abby went on medical leave. It was supposed to be temporary, but right after Eddie started, we got the news—she quit. And didn’t say a word to anyone, not before, not after. Just left and cut everyone out, like we wouldn’t have understood, or worse, like we were the same as the assholes in the media who said it was her fault.”

“You all felt hurt. Betrayed,” Maddie fills in, turning the last piece of the puzzle over in her mind. “And she and Buck...were together?”

They turn into the parking lot of Buck’s apartment complex and Howie sighs as he pulls into an empty space and shuts off the engine.

“I really don’t know that much about it,” he says. “All I know is that when I first met him, Buck was kind of a playboy. He liked to flirt, to hook up, could get pretty outrageous, really—and then all of a sudden he stopped. Was still fun, but serious too. Abby was always pretty private though. I only found out because I saw them kiss once after a bad case, otherwise I don’t think I would have until Buck admitted it after she left.”

Maddie mulls that over and bites her lip. Her hand hovers over the seat belt release for a moment, but she can’t seem to make herself want to get out of the car. There’s something about all of it that makes her stomach twist uncomfortably, and it’s not anything to do with Buck. Rather, the discomfort of wondering what it says about her own future.

Is she going to wake up in five years, ten years, and still be able to do this? Is that all it takes—one catastrophic case—to make someone’s whole life fall apart? Is she going to slip up someday and lose everything she’s worked so hard to build for herself? She’d like to think not, but…

“Do you ever wonder if we’re not really cut out for this?” She asks quietly, looking up at the ceiling. 

“I don’t think anyone is,” Howie replies, toying absently with his keychain. “But someone has to do it anyway. So we step up. And those of us who make it work for the long haul—I think you have to find the things and people that make you happy and keep you sane and not let go. Hen has Karen and Denny, Bobby and Athena have each other and her kids, Eddie has Christopher and Adriana and Buck…”

Maddie glances over. “What about you?” 

He meets her eyes for a moment and then looks away again, a small smile playing around the edges of his mouth.

“Well, I’m pretty happy sitting here with you,” he admits. The discomfort from before shifts to something lighter, butterflies in her stomach and a sudden spark of _awareness_ buzzing under her skin.

“So am I,” she replies.

Maddie clears her throat and finally releases her seat belt then. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you on the plane?”

“I’ll be the one with the cool shades,” he jokes.

As it turns out, the case itself isn’t that bad, all things considered.

Well, no, it’s bad, but that’s because they’re dealing with a serial killer. The team at least isn’t bad. Beyond a few awkward and tense moments right after their arrival when it’s clear there’s still a certain amount of underlying hurt and unspoken feelings muddying the air, they all manage to work together. Pretty damn well, in fact, Maddie thinks. She can tell why Howie had been so clear that Abby was good at this.

If Eddie stays closer to the office where Buck has all of his equipment set up than anywhere else the whole time—well. That’s not something she’s going to push about.

When all is said and done, Abby sees them off. They’re just about to board the plane when she calls Buck’s name, and Maddie pauses for a moment with her feet on the steps before she keeps going.

On the plane, she sets her bag down across from Bobby, but can’t quite stop herself from glancing out the window. She can only see Buck’s profile, but he doesn’t seem tense or withdrawn, so she takes that as a good sign.

“I fired him once, did he ever tell you that?” Bobby says, briefly following her line of vision before opening up his briefcase, already looking ahead to the next case.

Maddie’s eyebrows shoot up. “You _fired_ him?”

Bobby shrugs. “It only stuck for about six hours or so. But yeah—when he first started, he was a brat. Cocky and thrill-seeking, with an attitude that made it seem like if he hadn’t decided to work for the Bureau, he would have ended up arrested for hacking into it. He still gets frustrated with procedure sometimes, but back then it was a nightmare. I can’t even remember what exactly he did anymore, but I know it was something that risked costing us a conviction and I had been having a bad day, so...I fired him.”

Out the window, Abby raises her hand like she’s going to touch Buck’s face, only to abort the gesture halfway through and look away.

“He’s grown a hell of a lot since then,” Bobby adds. “Grown into a damn good agent. And an even better man.”

Maddie looks away from the window to glance at him. 

“He looks up to you a lot,” she says. “I know he doesn’t say it, but. He does.”

“I know.” He leans back in his seat. “Just like I know how glad he is to have you back in his life. This team, we’re a family, but I know he missed you.”

Maddie looks back to the window.

“Yeah,” she replies. Her voice is soft. “I missed him too.”

As she watches, Buck briefly hugs Abby before walking away, climbing into the plane. He doesn’t say anything as he moves to the back and slides into an empty seat before pulling his laptop out of his bag.

“Wheels up,” the captain calls.

As the engine starts up, Maddie grabs her bag and makes her way to the back of the plane as well. 

“Hey. This seat taken?”

Buck glances up from his laptop and gives her a small smile as she slips in next to him.

“Hey. Thought you were sitting with Bobby.”

Maddie shrugs. “I was. And now I’m sitting with you. Bobby would probably be a lot weirder about me falling asleep on his shoulder, which I fully intend to do by the way. I’m tired.”

Buck laughs and lifts his arm to wrap around her shoulders. “Feel free.” He lowers his voice. “Although, I can think of at least one other person on this plane who would be very okay with that—”

Maddie glances across the open space at Howie where he’s leaning against the window absorbed in a book and her face heats.

“Remember how I was very cool and nice and didn’t interrogate you about your ex-girlfriend even though I didn’t know she was your ex until right before we had to work a case together?” She interrupts. “Because I do.”

Buck presses his lips together and makes a gesture like he’s locking his mouth with a key.

“No crush talk then,” he agrees. “Got it.”

Maddie rests her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. She hates the word _crush_ —it never fails to make her feel like she’s back in high school. And it also just doesn’t...fit. It’s too small, too immature to describe the tangled mess behind the door in her head labeled _romance_. 

“You could tell me what you and Abby were talking about on the tarmac,” she nudges. “Looked serious.”

“Weren’t you just reminding me how cool and nice you were about that?” Buck laughs. 

Maddie hums. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But, you know. You can. If you do.” 

He’s quiet for a moment, his thumb rubbing absently against her shoulder.

“It was serious, I guess,” he says finally. “But good? She apologized. For leaving the way she did. Or, at least, for leaving _me_ the way she did—honestly, I never really blamed her for leaving the Bureau, but the other part...stung. For a long time. So it’s nice to have closure?”

“She’s—uh—” Buck clears his throat. “She’s getting married. His name is Sam and he is perfectly normal. He teaches English Literature and has two daughters and lives his life without thinking about serial killers and violent crimes and the worst parts of humanity. And that’s what she needed—maybe what she always needed, but especially after everything she went through—just someone who could help her set it all aside.”

Maddie opens her eyes and lifts her head to look at him. “Do you still wish that could be you?”

Buck shakes his head. “No. No, because I think—I think what _I_ need is the opposite. I can’t just put it aside and I don’t want someone who doesn’t get it, who doesn’t understand what we go through, the things I have to see every day. I don’t need to be pulled out of the mess, I just need someone willing to climb down into it with me and make sure I don’t lose myself.” 

She doesn’t turn her head to look at Eddie, but she does bite back a smile. Filing that away, she says—

“Even after you find someone—you know that I’ll always be there to do that too, don’t you? I’m not going anywhere ever again.”

“Promise?”

Maddie reaches over and grabs his free hand, hooking her pinky through his. “Pinky swear. No takebacks.”

She resettles then, resting her head back on his shoulder and closing her eyes again. Buck squeezes her shoulder gently.

“For what it’s worth,” he says. “I’m really glad you came back.”

She smiles. “Me too.”


	5. Chapter 5

_Present_

Eighty minutes. Buck’s nails dig into the palms of his hands as he clenches and releases his fists, leaving half-crescent indentations. There’s a wild, desperate energy buzzing under his skin, and he wants to move, wants to run, wants to go up to the roof and scream until his throat can’t take it anymore, but he can’t leave his chair, can’t look away from his screens, can’t stop because every minute that ticks down feels like it wrenches a year of his own life away and if it runs out, he really doesn’t know—”

“I don’t know what’s left, Bobby,” he admits. “Teams have checked the cemeteries that he could have made it to, construction sites—”

He flinches a little at that, his mind flickering back to being tied to a chair and dizzy with pain and blood loss and Eddie—

_I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Buck—_

—bargaining with Fisher—

_What do you want, huh? To make me pay, to make me suffer? Fine. Just let him go. Please._

—holding his hand in the ambulance—

_You’re going to be okay…_

Buck clears his throat roughly. “I don’t know where to look next. You have to make him tell you—the clock is running out—”

“I’m doing my best to get it out of him, but forget about the clock, Buck. It doesn’t matter.”

Buck’s heart freezes in his chest, flooding his veins with ice. His voice is barely recognizable to his own ears when he forces out—

“You think he’s already dead.”

“Nobody thinks that,” Bobby insists. “That’s not what I said. I said the clock doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t.”

“Bobby—”

“Listen to me, Buck—Price took people he thought had done something wrong, who deserved to be held accountable. He wanted them to die. Sending those countdowns, making random ransom demands, it was only ever about distracting from his real motivation, and maybe a little because he liked getting to witness all the panic. But you know as well as I do that he put almost all his victims in closed coffins with maybe a few hours of air at most—every single one was gone long before that clock ran out.” 

Buck slumps down in his chair. His eyes and neck ache from spending so long staring at computers but he can’t stop, can’t go home, can’t give up. He can’t. 

“Thought you were trying to convince me you don’t think he’s dead.”

“I don’t,” Bobby replies. “Because I don’t think he actually wanted to kill another cop. Best guess, he assumed he could stash Eddie somewhere, wait for enough time to pass, and then slip away thinking we wouldn’t be able to identify him. Now do I think Eddie’s safe? No, and he may even also be underground somewhere. But I think Price deviated from his pattern enough that wherever Eddie is, he’s not going to be dead by the time that clock runs out.”

The unspoken is clear—that if he really did follow the same pattern, Eddie was dead hours ago. 

“Buck.” Bobby’s voice is calm, gentle. The same voice he uses with families of hostages. “I need you to trust me. Keep looking on your end—try looking into his property some more, maybe there’s something else there—but trust me to do my job on mine. Okay?”

Buck rubs at his eyes. “Okay.”

“If anyone can find him, it’s you,” Bobby assures. Then, he hangs up, and Buck pulls up the map of Price’s property. The team did a sweep of the house, including the basement, when they arrested the man, but maybe there’s something…

It takes him nearly forty-five minutes of combing through the property records and some questionably legal hacking into the local permit office to find something. His heart hammers in his chest as he scrambles to call—

“You have to go back to Price’s land,” Buck says the second Maddie picks up.

“Buck, we looked—”

“No, listen—Eddie’s there, I know it, look there used to be another house on the property, and there was an old well next to it,” he rushes to explain. “Now, the house was torn down and the well hasn’t been used for years—there was some sort of accident with stupid kids messing with fireworks or homemade bombs or something, that doesn’t really matter—but the point is, we didn’t look that far before because Price sold that section of his land back to the city a few years ago when they wanted to put in some kind of access road. It’s not _technically_ his anymore. But I’m pretty sure that well is still there, and it’s the only other place I can think of where Eddie might be.”

“If you say that’s where we need to go, I trust you,” Maddie replies. “Send me the information, I’ll get a team out there.”

Buck exhales shakily. A few keystrokes and it’s done. “Sent.”

“I’ll let you know when we find him.”

_When_ , Buck repeats to himself. _Not if. When._

On the screen, the timer continues to run. Logically, he thinks Bobby may be right. That it was only ever intended as some sort of point of secondary torture, to drive him crazy. But even without necessarily the same risk of direct suffocation as some of the other victims—

Buck puts his head in his hands. Being trapped down a well for nearly half a day isn’t a walk in the park either. Eddie could have gotten hypothermia. He could have a concussion or other injuries from when Price took him in the first place. Depending on the amount of water in the well, he could have drowned—

_Tick, tock._

* * *

_Two months earlier_

There’s blood on her hands.

It’s hardly the first time. She gets nosebleeds in the winters—has ever since she was a kid—has wiped absently at her face while half-asleep in the dry mornings and wound up with smears of red on her fingers. And she’s been hurt other ways—split lips, skinned knuckles, been grazed by bullets, hell, nearly cut her own finger off in a cooking accident once.

Maddie’s familiar with having blood on her hands.

But this time it isn’t her blood.

And she can’t look away.

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Buck bursting through the ER doors, but her gaze stays glued to the streaks on her palms.

“Maddie— _Maddie_.” Her brother kneels down on the ground in front of her chair. “Are you okay? Can you tell me what happened?”

“I’m fine,” she says, her voice distant to her own ears. “It’s not my blood.”

“What happened?” Buck repeats. When he covers her hands with his she flinches, but it breaks whatever odd spell had kept her numb and staring.

“It’s so stupid,” Maddie replies, shaking her head. “It’s so—we were just having dinner.”

“You and Chim,” Buck fills in, and she nods.

“We were having dinner.” Maddie takes a deep breath, then another for good measure. “We were having dinner and one of his neighbors came over. Mrs. Chen, she lives on the first floor and she’s all alone since her daughter got married and moved away, so sometimes Howie does things for her. It’s sweet, you know?”

“Maddie—”

“She thought she heard a noise,” she forces out. “She was worried there might be someone in her apartment. Howie said he would go check, but he wasn’t concerned—it wasn’t the first time and it’s never been a real issue before. He promised to be right back so I—I stayed. Until Mrs. Chen screamed loud enough to damn near wake the whole building.”

Her stomach rolls and she presses her lips together as she pauses for a long moment.

“It was her daughter’s husband, as it turns out. She left him. He thought she was cheating and also that she would have gone to her mom’s to get away from him. He had a knife. And Howie wasn’t armed because he thought—”

“Thought it wasn’t a big deal,” Buck sighs. He gets up from the floor and falls into the chair next to her. Maddie doesn’t resist when he wraps his arms around her, just turns her face to hide in his chest.

“Howie’s in surgery,” she adds. “They don’t know how long it’ll be.”

If she closes her eyes, she’s back in Mrs. Chen’s apartment, kneeling on the floor, holding pressure on Howie’s stomach while waiting for the ambulance. There were so many things she could have said, so many things she _hadn’t_ said—god, why hadn’t she? Why hadn’t she just _told_ him—

“You’ll tell him when he wakes up,” Buck says, and Maddie realizes that she’s been speaking out loud.

“I wasted so much time,” she says. And for what? Because she was scared? Because she was worried it might change things to call a spade a spade and admit that they’ve basically been dating without saying so ever since they returned from Chicago? 

“You weren’t ready,” Buck replies absently. “You were...taking things slow.”

“I shouldn’t have waited,” she insists, pulling back enough to look at him. “God, any of us could die practically any day in this job, but we could also...get hit by a car or get cancer or apparently get stabbed by random assholes for trying to be good neighbors. We don’t have the luxury of just sitting back and assuming we’ll have more time, that we’ll get to it eventually.”

Buck looks away. He shifts in the chair as he checks the pockets of his coat—Maddie is about to ask what he’s doing when he finally emerges with a couple packets of single-use wet wipes. 

“I carry them for Chris,” he offers with a shrug in response to her curious glance, and then he’s ripping one open and reaching for her hand to wipe the blood away.

“I can wash my own hands,” she argues without any real heat. Buck just looks at her.

“And how long have you been sitting here not doing that?” He asks. When she doesn’t respond, he nods as if that proves his point and goes back to wiping her hands. 

“You shouldn’t feel bad for waiting,” he says quietly, not looking up from his task. “And just because it wasn’t official—Chim knows how you feel, whether you said it in so many words or not. Just like you know how he feels. You didn’t waste anything.”

“Says the man who won’t tell his best friend that he’s been in love with him for god knows how long,” Maddie replies. She half-expects Buck to deny it, but he doesn’t, just snorts and shakes his head.

“That’s different. And we’re not talking about me.”

_Well, maybe we should be_ , is on the tip of her tongue, but then she sees the look on his face, the quiet resignation in his eyes, and swallows it back. He’s right, it’s not the time. Although she does wonder if it ever will be. 

He finishes and gets up to toss the filthy wipes away. When he returns, Maddie sighs and leans into his shoulder. She feels like she could sleep for a year and it wouldn’t be enough to chase the deep exhaustion from her bones. 

“He’s going to be okay,” she says, willing it into existence. “He’s going to wake up. And I’m going to tell him.”

“He’ll be fine,” Buck assures. 

_He has to be_ , she thinks.

Maddie falls asleep at some point, but Buck wakes her when the doctor comes out to let her know Howie’s out of surgery. After some surreptitious maneuvering that may involve stretching the truth a bit and flashing her badge, Maddie finds herself in another chair at his bedside, slipping her hand into his.

She dozes off again, but wakes up to a squeeze of her hand, her eyes flying open.

“Hey,” Howie croaks out. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“You can’t do that.” The words burst out of her as she reaches over to clutch their hands with her free one. “You can’t—”

“Get stabbed?” His eyes are heavy-lidded from the morphine in his drip, but the laugh lines crinkle as his lips curve up. “I’ll try to avoid it in the future. Wasn’t very fun.”

“ _Leave_ ,” Maddie says. Her heart is in her throat. “Because I spent so long running and I finally want to stand still and I want to stand still with _you_ , okay? So you can’t—”

She lifts his hand to her lips gently, trying to avoid jostling him.

“You just can’t,” she finishes.

“I love you, too,” Howie replies. And when she laughs, it’s watery. 

No more wasting time.

* * *

_Present_

Eddie’s shivering. He can’t seem to stop.

The damp has seeped through his clothes and the air has only gotten colder as time has passed. He wants to sleep, but between the dizziness and the nausea that’s gnawing at his gut, he’s pretty sure he has a concussion. 

He tries to think through it anyway. How long he’s been down there. How long he has left. 

It’s difficult to focus, his mind flitting from _Christopher_ to _Buck_ in between each thought about his current circumstances, grasping at stray wisps of _have to see my son grow up_ and _never told Buck how I—_ before drifting away again.

They aren’t too far from a lake—that’s probably the source for the well anyway. And if there’s water coming in, that means there’s a way out. At least in theory.

“Of course, if you’re wrong, you’re dead, Diaz,” he mumbles to himself. Then again—he shivers again—he might not survive sitting and doing nothing for much longer either. 

Eddie groans as he pushes himself up and crawls back over to the opening, shining his flashlight down into the water. It’s not the clearest, but he can make out what looks like a tunnel. 

He looks up, up, up again at the dark, unmoving cover. Unconsciously, his hand scrambles for the St. Christopher medal around his neck, his thumb moving over the familiar indentations. 

_Decisions, decisions, decisions…_

Eddie looks down again. Thinks of the things he’s done and the ones he hasn’t. Thinks about everything he still has left to see.

_I’m not going to die down here,_ he thinks.

Then he takes a deep breath—

—and dives.


	6. Chapter 6

_Present_

“What do you mean he’s not there?” Buck demands. _No, no, no, no, no—_

“One of the search and rescue team rappelled down into the well,” Maddie repeats softly. “He came up with a cut cable and a piece of torn fabric—looked like something off of Eddie’s shirt. As far as we can tell, you were right, he was here, but—”

“Well, he didn’t just climb out himself, Maddie, so where—”

Maddie goes quiet, hesitating.

“Maddie.”

“It’s possible that he went down into the well,” she admits. “Theoretically, he could have followed the underground tunnels out and up into the lake. Made his way back to the surface.”

“But if he didn’t make it, that means he drowned,” Buck says. “That’s—that’s what you’re not saying, right? And we don’t know when he went under, if that’s what happened.”

The timer on his computer screen ran out several minutes ago. His stomach revolts and it takes everything for him to not throw up. The white noise is back in his ears, his breathing coming too fast to measure.

_My fault, my fault, my fault._

Why hadn’t he looked at the property records sooner? Why had he spent so much time sending people to search elsewhere? If he had just—

How desperate must Eddie have been? To take matters into his own hands. To not wait—

_He didn’t think you would find him_ , an ugly voice whispers.

_No_ , Buck pushes that away. _No, he didn’t need to wait._

Eddie’s never been the type to sit around and wait to be rescued. He probably didn’t even think about it at all.

But Buck still should have found him. Long before he ever had to make the choice.

“—Buck. _Buck_!”

Buck inhales sharply as his world tilts and then rights itself, focusing on Maddie yelling in his ear.

“I’m here,” he croaks. “I’m back, I’m listening.”

“I was saying that search and rescue wants to try sending trackers out with heat sensors. See if they can pick up a signal.”

“That might be difficult—” Buck goes still at the faint voice in the background as Maddie gasps in his ear. “—I’m pretty cold.”

“Eddie,” Buck gasps out. “Eddie?! Maddie, what’s—”

There’s static and shouting over the line for a moment, but then Maddie comes back on, breathless.

“We got him, Buck. He passed out, they’re getting him into an ambulance, but we got him. He’s alive, Buck. He’s alive.”

And Buck puts his head down on his desk, and finally, _finally_ breaks.

* * *

_One week later_

Maddie’s phone buzzes in her pocket.

_Want a ride home?_ Howie asks. _I’m finishing up some paperwork, but I’ll be done in a few minutes._

She glances through the window of the gym and bites her lip.

_Ask me again when you’re done?_ She texts back. _Might need to do some damage control._

_Sure. Good luck._

As Maddie watches through the window, Buck’s fists hit the heavy bag once, twice, continuing on until she loses track of how many times they’ve connected. She winces internally at the lack of gloves or wraps—she knows Buck knows better than that, but supposes that’s kind of the point. He’s not working out, he’s punishing himself. Split knuckles or a hairline fracture aren’t going to bother him. 

She finally opens the door as Buck spins a kick at the bag—he hesitates just a moment too long to stop it from slamming into his thigh on the backswing. 

“That looked like it hurt,” Maddie says. Buck ignores her and aims another punch at the bag, hissing through his teeth and shaking his hand out when he steps back. 

“So did that,” she adds. 

“I really don’t want to talk, Maddie.”

She rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “No, apparently you just want to hide and hurt yourself which is definitely better than just talking about your feelings, right?”

Buck steps away from the bag and blows out a frustrated breath. 

“You don’t get it.”

“Buck—“ Maddie cuts herself off, taking a moment to gentle her tone because she doesn’t want to snap at him. “Eddie’s fine, you know. Thirty hours in the hospital and instructions for continuing concussion checks later, he was back at home with Christopher and very happy to be there. No worse for wear.”

Buck laughs, sharp and bitter. “Yeah, no thanks to me.” 

“Come on, that’s not fair—“

“He saved himself, Maddie!” Buck replies. “I was too late—if it had been left to me, he could have died!”

“But he didn’t!” Maddie shoots back. “Maybe he got himself out of that well, but we caught the guy who put him there because of you. We were able to find Eddie and get him medical attention because of you. Everyone made it home and the only one acting like that wasn’t a victory _is you_! So why don’t you tell me what this is really about.” 

Buck looks like he’s going to snap at her again, but the next moment all the fight visibly drains out of him and he sinks down onto the weight bench nearby, scrubbing his hands over his face. 

“You know, with Abby—with her last mission—I wasn’t there, wasn’t assigned because it was a special task force. And I’ve spent years thinking that maybe if I had been I could have seen something, figured out what was going to happen. Thinking that if it had been me backing up that team, those agents would still be alive and Abby wouldn’t have left. But now—“

He shakes his head and shrugs. “It really only ever was just a fantasy. And now I know exactly how untrue it would have been because this time it _was_ me, and I took so long, I wasn’t—Eddie could have died. He could have died and I’m not good enough to even save the man I—“

He freezes when a throat clears from the doorway and Maddie starts, her head whipping around to see Eddie standing there watching Buck with an unreadable look on his face. 

“Maddie, do you mind giving us a minute alone please?” The other man asks, and Maddie glances between the two of them before nodding slowly. 

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Sure.”

It’s not a conversation she can have anyway. So, she walks out. And she tries not to look back. 

Some things should be private after all.

_Spend the night at your place tonight?_ She texts. _Turns out I wasn’t needed after all._

_I’ll meet you in the garage._

* * *

The empty gym seems to echo in the silence that follows Maddie’s exit. All Buck can do is stare at Eddie across the room as he slowly gets to his feet, eyes tracking over him to catalogue the scratches on his face, the cuts on his hands and arms, all the things Buck hasn’t let himself look at in the days since Eddie’s been back because he never let himself stay in the same room for long enough. His head is a mess of _my fault, my fault, my fault_ and he couldn’t bear to hear the same from Eddie himself, so he chose avoidance as the path of least resistance.

He should have known he wouldn’t be able to get away with it for long.

“How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough.”

Buck’s throat clicks as he swallows. “Eddie—”

But Eddie interrupts. “Finish the sentence.”

Buck blinks. “What?” He can’t mean—he can’t be asking—

Eddie shrugs and pushes off the wall, stepping further into the space. “You were in the middle of saying something before. About not being good enough to save the man you...but you didn’t finish the sentence. And I’m pretty interested in how it was going to end, so I’m asking you to finish it. Please.”

Buck looks away, feeling exposed, wanting to run away, and he doesn’t think that’s an option anymore. 

Still, he tries. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It was just a stupid—it’s not important.”

Eddie makes a frustrated sound and rakes a hand through his hair. “I swear to god, Buck—you’ve been avoiding me for days, you walk out of every room I walk into, you don’t answer your phone when I call...yeah, I could have died, and the only person I wanted to see after my son and my sister was my best friend but instead you ghosted me without any explanation, so could you _please_ just answer this _one thing_ —”

“The man I love!” Buck shouts, throwing his hands up. “Is that what you wanted to hear? _I’m not good enough to even save the man I love_ —that’s how the sentence was going to end.”

There are a thousand other words trapped in his throat— _I’m in love with you, I’ve always been in love with you, and I haven’t been able to look at you because I almost lost you and I can’t_ —but they’re dug in like barbed wire or shards of glass and he can’t find it in him to flay himself open any further. 

Eddie is quiet, his face impassive as he takes that in. Then he nods.

“Right. Okay.”

Buck opens his mouth to ask what the hell that’s supposed to mean, but Eddie is already moving, closing the distance between them in a few strides. And then Buck is being kissed as if Eddie thinks he might die all over again if he doesn’t get the chance.

It starts out fierce—frustrated and biting as Eddie scrapes his teeth over Buck’s lower lip and licks into his mouth—but then it softens and slows to gentle catches of lips and reassuring caresses that seem to all whisper _alive, alive, alive_.

When the kiss breaks, Eddie presses his forehead to Buck’s instead of pulling away.

“You’re an idiot,” he says quietly, quickly adding, “I love you, too. The whole time I was down there, the only thing I could think about after Christopher was that I’d never told you that. And that if I managed to get home, I was going to. I’ve been trying to catch you all week to say it.” 

“I’m sorry,” Buck replies. “For avoiding you. I just—”

“Got caught up in your head?” Eddie fills in. “I get it. But just in case—Buck, you’re good at your job. The best. I don’t blame you for not being able to pull a miracle out of thin air and no one else does either. And I’m fine. I’m here. The worst case scenario—that didn’t happen.”

Buck kisses him again for the reminder, and just because he can, and it loosens the crushing tight band around his chest enough for him to feel like he can draw a full breath for the first time since Eddie was taken. 

“So...what now?” He asks after another moment of silent closeness.

Eddie hums and finally steps back. “We should clean and wrap your knuckles since it looks like you did a number on them. And then I was thinking Thai and an evening playing video games on the couch with my kid...and maybe a little making out after he goes to bed. If that works for you.”

Buck grins. “Let’s see if you’re still up for that after I kick your ass at Mario Kart.”

“As if that’s going to happen,” Eddie laughs before dragging Buck into the locker room where they keep the first aid kid. 

“Big talk from a man who keeps losing to his ten-year-old—” Buck’s own laughter gets cut off by another kiss.

Later, he spends the night in Eddie’s apartment. And maybe he still takes too long to fall asleep because he can’t stop watching the gentle rise and fall of Eddie’s chest. But he does sleep eventually. 

When they walk into work the next day and Buck steals a kiss when Eddie passes him a cup of coffee, he notices Chim passing Hen several folded bills and blushes even as he grins and good-naturedly flips them off. 

“Took you long enough,” Hen calls back. “Any longer and Athena would have won by default for betting that even a near-death experience wouldn’t get you two to work it out.”

“Lies and slander—I refuse to believe Athena would involve herself in something as ridiculous as betting on her coworkers’ love lives,” Buck replies, only to jump and spill his coffee when Athena’s voice comes from behind him.

“Is that a fact?” She asks, slipping past him to fix her own coffee. “Just keep it clean on comms, lovebirds. That’s all I have to say on that.”

Maddie gives him a once-over. “Buck, you literally live across the hall from him—did you have to show up in the same clothes you wore yesterday?”

“Maybe I was busy with other things this morning,” he replies and she makes a face.

They all start laughing then and Eddie’s hand squeezes Buck’s waist as he leaves the kitchen for his desk. Buck sips at the mug in his hands and basks in the warmth filling his chest that has nothing to do with coffee.

In a minute, he knows he’ll have to go to his own office. To dive into grisly files and statistics. To stare evil in the face and not flinch, the way they all must every day in this job. But for the moment, none of that matters. For the moment, he’s just happy, surrounded by the team he loves, the _family_ he loves, and that’s the most important thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me, all! This was fun! 
> 
> I do have a handful of other floating ideas for this universe that I might come back and play with at some point, but for now this is complete and a standalone work. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
